


For What It's Worth

by TheoMiller



Category: Knight & Rogue - Hilari Bell
Genre: Comment Fic, Fisk POV, Gen, Post Thief's War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 12:58:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2349239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheoMiller/pseuds/TheoMiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fisk considers his options.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For What It's Worth

**Author's Note:**

> This is currently standalone, but there's a 'verse that follows, aka my Thief's War sequel. It's also part of my Trope Bingo for this fandom, I'm randomly selecting tropes from a list of 75 and writing for them. This is #31, "fork in the road".

Going back to Michael would be so _easy_. I could fall into my place at his side, follow him to the ends of the world and back, and earn back his trust. I’d broken him, made him a little harder, enough that we’d never be the same, but it would be _close_. Back to good deeds and grand adventures, to easy camaraderie and being defined by my relationship with him.

No, I couldn’t go back to Michael. I’d never be able to rest, wondering if I’d have been happier, better off, striking out on my own. If Michael might’ve been happier with someone else, someone more similar to him in these ridiculous ideas of right and justice. Because, curse him, I did care about his happiness.

I could go back to running cons. I was _good_ at it, and I could help people just as easily with money as Michael could with mad schemes. Or I could give up this good deed lark altogether. I’d done my time. I’d saved the United Realms, and what good had the United Realms ever done me? I’d almost been forced to redeem a bloodless crime in blood just because one judicar had a gullible nephew, I’d seen Michael turned away and even beaten by those sworn to protect the citizens of the realms bust because of a few marks on his wrists, I’d watched my mother die because we were too poor to afford medicine, because in the end it _wasn’t_ about justice– it was about who your family was, what you looked like, how much you had in your purse, not what was _right_.

No, I couldn’t return to a life of crime. It was too cursed dangerous, and I’d had enough danger.

I’d never be able to settle down, not now. Michael had ruined me for anything other than living by my wits. And, long before Michael, my father had ruined me for domesticity. I couldn’t marry a woman and raise children in a world where, if I died, if their mother died, they could end up dying in the streets. And even if I settled on my own, taught children in some town, I wouldn’t be able to sustain both myself and Tipple for very long. And I wasn’t going to sell her.

No, I couldn’t find a town and carve out a permanent life.

…Curse Michael, and his ridiculous philosophy that had rotted my brain with childish dreams, degrading the sensibility I’d built up over years of hardships. I wasn’t a squire anymore. I was a bloody _knight errant_.


End file.
